


Passing Solace

by DarlaBlack



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Episode: s05e18 The Pine Bluff Variant, F/M, Missing Scene, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 14:49:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15342189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarlaBlack/pseuds/DarlaBlack





	Passing Solace

The act of keeping things from her is making him physically ill. He screams at her to get out, but she won’t. She takes his hand, his poor broken finger, and cradles it. “Oh, Mulder, what did they do to you?” and with all her little touches she reassures him, but he is so worked up from the stress of this day that he barely feels the relief. He wants to hop up and pace, to tear the room apart with his wild energy, but she holds him steady, fixes him in an orbit around her alone. At first, he is all sweat and adrenaline, but he is able to tell her some things as she holds his fingers in hers, ices the damage, checks his eyes, puts her fingers in his hair and on his face, even though it is dark. He is love-touch starved, and he drinks it in, leans his skin into it as if it were a salve.

She soothes. She sets. She bandages.

He draws his strength from her and she gives it freely, palms on his knees, perched on the coffee table before him.

“I need to go back,” he says.

“I know,” she says.

There is a tension thrumming between them, an unspoken vibration that is both sexual and deeply emotional, hot like pumping blood and need but also rooted in their shared vulnerability, in their fragile trust and codependence that he has shaken with his secrets. The way he felt, lying to her, when all he needed in the world was her bedrock strength, her blessing, has nearly sucked him dry. Her sense of betrayal, too, has not yet healed.

“I couldn’t tell you,” he says.

“I know,” she says.

And the tension buzzes higher. She feels it between her legs and in her chest. He looks at her with desperation, with contrition, with the knowledge that this could be the last time he sees her face.

“They might kill me,” he says.

“They won’t,” she says.

“How do you know?” His voice cracks. Her coat comes off and lands behind her on the coffee table. She lifts and leans forward to sit on his knees.

“They won’t,” she says, and with his good hand, he pulls her mouth to his.

She swallows his guilt, and he her fear, as adrenaline gives way to oxytocin: despair to arousal, terror to love, pain to sweet pleasurable solace. His fingers shake at the buttons of her blazer and she reaches to touch him steady again. Wary of his splinted finger, she strips them both as he stares unblinking and awed. His eyes catch on the netted ornamentation of her bra, on the taut peaks of her nipples straining through, until he can look no longer and must touch: lips on lace, the wet heat of his breath fanning out through the fabric.

“Oh,” she says.

They must shift to remove their bottoms, but she makes quick work: a doctor’s efficiency until they are both fully naked. His erection strains toward her and she wishes there were time to give it more attention, to acquaint herself more thoroughly. She stands, now, with bare toes curled into his rug, blue light of the fishtank illuminating her at an angle, and he looks at her with dangerous eyes, thumbs at her hips, dumbfounded at the recklessness of this decision.

“Scully,” he says, suddenly fearful.

“Mulder,” she says, an answering caress. It is too late for doubts. If this is a mistake, it is already made, and it will have been one they both needed too badly not to risk its consequences.

His right hand, his good hand, slides down her thigh to the back of her knee, and he tugs, pulling it to the couch alongside his naked skin. She moves: knees to soft leather, embracing his hips. He scoots so she can reach, but before she slides down onto him, he touches her, groans at the impossible slickness, and his head falls to her abdomen as his middle finger moves inside her.

“Fuck,” he whispers into her navel. His index finger joins the first while the pad of his thumb so softly grazes the slippery swell of her clit.

“Okay,” she murmurs back, almost silly with the joy of this feeling. Her fingers are entwined in his hair, nails against his scalp, and his head comes up so he can smile at her joke. He has never seen this Scully, wasn’t sure she even existed until just moments ago. She walks her knees farther forward, and he lets his wet digits slide out of her, to make room for the rest of him.

Eyes locked over their terrible, wonderful, worst, best, most necessary decision, she sinks down onto him and they both nearly cry out. She holds him there inside her, squeezes to feel the full solid weight of him, cannot help the arching backward at its unthinkable sensation. She should have known it would be this good; neither of them had dared hope.

They take and give together, soothe and suture the wounds of the past weeks, perhaps the past years. They fuck. They love without saying it, and after he spills into her, she holds him with all her limbs, sweat-slicked and sated, knowing they won’t talk of this again. Face buried in the humid place where his neck meets his shoulder, she kisses his skin, tells herself to remember the taste of him, then lets him go.

Later, kneeling on the cold ground with a gun to his head, Mulder thinks only of her. Not his sister, not his parents, not the justice that the world deserves. The fact that it is only Scully Scully Scully—her truth-sharp eyes, healing hands, the softness of her mouth—renders him both grateful and more afraid, even, than of death. Grateful to have had this one good thing, and afraid that it has already consumed every other part of him.

He lives. He runs to save the world. He tries to forget.


End file.
